Thylacine

Tasmanian wolf or Tasmanian tiger: Neither wolf nor tiger

Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman, who in 1642 was the first European to reach the island of Tasmania, reported “footprints, not unlike the claws of a tiger”. In doing so he had discovered the island’s top predator, which later became known under the misleading name “Tasmanian tiger”. More confusing names followed, such as thylacine, Tasmanian wolf, dog-headed opossum, striped wolf, zebra dog, or marsupial hyena.

Many of these names are misleading, because the thylacine is neither a wolf nor does it resemble one. It is not a tiger, not an opossum, and not a hyena either. Its body build is more reminiscent of a dog or dingo, while the shorter forelegs and longer hind legs give it a certain resemblance to a cat or hyena, and its stiff tail is reminiscent of a kangaroo.

The first scientific description of this unusual animal, which reminded some of a chimera, was written by the land surveyor and naturalist George Prideaux Harris in 1808, stationed in Tasmania, about five years after the first European settlement of the island. The basis for his description were two thylacines that had been captured in a trap using a kangaroo as bait. Harris gave the animal the name Didelphis cynocephalus, which translates as “dog-headed opossum”. In the same year, Harris also described the Tasmanian devil under the name Didelphis ursus. Because Harris mistakenly assumed both species were opossums—which in fact occur in North and South America—he placed them in the same genus.

Two years after the first description, the thylacine was assigned to the genus of quolls (Dasyurus), and in 1824 the Tasmanian tiger finally received its own genus Thylacinus from the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck.

In reality, the thylacine and the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), which still lives in Tasmania today, are only distantly related and belong neither to opossums nor to the true “marsupial rats”, but to the order of carnivorous marsupials (Dasyuromorphia). The Tasmanian thylacine was a marsupial and a carnivore. Females carried their young in a pouch on the belly which, unlike a kangaroo’s, opened to the rear. The pouch contained two pairs of teats, so a female could raise a maximum of four young. Immediately after birth, the young crawl into the pouch and remain there until they can feed independently.

Many Australian marsupials closely resemble some mammals of the Old World and the New World, even though there is no close relationship. The thylacine’s dog-like appearance is also not because it is related to canids, but is due to convergent evolution. Because the thylacine occupied the same ecological niche in Australia and New Guinea as canids elsewhere, it evolved many of the same traits: sharp teeth, powerful jaws, raised heels, and a similar overall body shape. Despite these similarities, as a marsupial it is not related to the placental carnivores of the Northern Hemisphere.

Tasmanian thylacines reached a shoulder height of around 60 centimeters and weighed between 15 and 35 kilograms. Their short coat was gray to yellow-gray, and the 13 to 19 dark transverse stripes on the rear part of the body earned them names such as marsupial tiger, Tasmanian tiger, striped wolf, and zebra dog. The life expectancy of these animals is now estimated at 12 to 14 years.

Thylacine – fact sheet

Alternative names	Thylacinus, Thyla, Tasmanian wolf, Tasmanian tiger, Tassie tiger, marsupial wolf, marsupial tiger, Tasmanian pouched wolf, kangaroo wolf, zebra wolf, hyaena opossum, Van Diemen’s Land tiger, bulldog-tiger, dobsegna …
Scientific names	Thylacinus cynocephalus, Didelphys cynocephalus, Dasyurus cynocephalus, Peracyon cynocephalus, Didelphys cynocephala, Thylacinus harrisii, Dasyurus lucocephalus, Thylacinus striatus, Thylacinus communis, Thylacinus breviceps, Thylacinus rostralis …
Original range	Tasmania, previously also mainland Australia and New Guinea (Australia)
Time of extinction	1936
Causes of extinction	hunting, habitat loss, competition, disease and/or inbreeding
IUCN status	extinct

An unusual specimen at the Museum-Aquarium Nancy

At the Museum-Aquarium in Nancy (France) there is a thylacine specimen that strikingly illustrates how difficult it used to be to classify this species correctly. It was probably created between 1885 and 1890—at a time when knowledge of the thylacine in Europe was only fragmentary.

The French taxidermist who produced the piece apparently had only a tanned skin available. No original bones were preserved; X-rays from 2017 show that the specimen was made entirely without skeletal support. The taxidermist, who evidently only knew that it was an animal from Australia, had to rely on his own imagination.

In France, hardly anything was known about the thylacine itself. Only its status as a marsupial was known. The taxidermist therefore took the most prominent representative of this group as his model—the kangaroo. The result was a reconstruction full of anatomical errors: the thylacine was depicted standing upright on its hind legs, as if it moved like a kangaroo. The pouch was also shifted to the front and given a forward-facing opening—a kangaroo feature, not that of the thylacine, whose pouch opened to the rear.

Historic film footage of living thylacines shows that these animals almost always walked on all fours. Standing upright happened only rarely, for example to look around or to brace themselves—in those moments the strong tail did indeed serve as support. The unnatural pose of the Nancy specimen therefore reveals more about the ignorance of the time than about the species itself.

Even so, the taxidermist deserves credit for his craftsmanship. The body is modeled plastically, the proportions look plausible, and the facial features have a certain gentleness. It is also remarkable that the animal was not portrayed—as so often with 19th-century predators—with bared teeth or an aggressive expression. Instead, the Nancy thylacine appears almost peaceful, almost like a herbivore.

Today we know: this specimen is not a true-to-nature depiction of the thylacine, but a historical document—an example of how gaps in knowledge can shape the portrayal of an animal. The International Thylacine Specimen Database (ITSD) lists around one hundred thylacine specimens worldwide. But the Nancy specimen is the only one presented in this unusual kangaroo posture.

The thylacine’s range

The thylacine was not restricted to Tasmania but was once widespread on the Australian mainland and in New Guinea. During the Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower than today, Australia and the offshore islands of Tasmania and New Guinea formed a single landmass—the ancient continent of Meganesia.

Rock paintings, such as those at the Ubirr rock formation in northern Australia, document the presence of the thylacine. The Indigenous people who arrived in Australia around 60,000 years ago were familiar with the thylacine, as shown by the level of detail in their depictions. Particularly striking are the vertical stripes on the back—a characteristic feature that clearly distinguishes the thylacine from dingoes or wild dogs, which have no stripes. The Ubirr rock painting probably dates from around 2,000 years ago. However, Aboriginal people repainted and renewed the rock faces over a period of several millennia, starting around 40,000 BC.

In addition, there is plenty of evidence that the Tasmanian tiger did not live exclusively in Tasmania: subfossil remains, including bones, have been found in all Australian states. Some date back to around 3000 BC, while the most recent fossils date to around 1000 BC. In 1990, scientists also discovered a mummified carcass of a thylacine in a cave on the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia, carbon-dated to an age of 3,300 years.

On Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, fossil footprints also indicate the presence of the thylacine. The northernmost evidence of the species comes from Chimbu Province in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and, according to a 2021 zooarchaeological study, dates to the early Holocene, about 10,000 to 8,500 years before present.

Did the thylacine once live in South America as well?

In his book Vom Aussterben bedroht? (1972), Igor Akimuschkin writes that thylacines also occurred in South America even before prehistoric times, based on bone finds in Patagonia that resemble thylacines. Akimuschkin presumably refers to an 1892 article, The Discovery of Australian-Like Mammals in South America, by the English naturalist Richard Lydekker. In that article, Lydekker reports fossil remains of carnivorous marsupials from the Tertiary in Patagonia that were said to be related to the thylacine.

Today, however, we know that these fossil remains, although they show superficial similarities to the thylacine, are not directly related to it. Instead, they belong to a group of extinct carnivorous marsupials known as Sparassodonta. These animals lived in South America during the Cenozoic and are not direct ancestors of the thylacine. The Sparassodonta, sometimes referred to as “marsupial hyenas”, do share some evolutionary traits such as skull and dental morphology with the Tasmanian tiger, but these similarities are the result of convergent evolution rather than direct relatedness.

The actual ancestors of the thylacine, the extinct thylacine family (Thylacinidae), were once distributed across Tasmania, Australia, and New Guinea. The thylacine itself was the only species that survived into modern times. According to a study published in September 2024 by Australian paleontologist Timothy J. Churchill, three new thylacine ancestors from the late Oligocene were discovered in northwestern Queensland: Badjcinus timfaulkneri, Nimbacinus peterbridgei, and Ngamalacinus nigelmarveni. These finds are among the oldest known Thylacinidae and suggest that the family diversified earlier than previously assumed. The long-held assumption that Australia was dominated by carnivorous reptiles 25 to 23 million years ago is increasingly contradicted by the growing fossil evidence for carnivorous marsupials such as these new Thylacinidae.

The thylacine’s demographic history in Australia and Tasmania

A 2017 study by evolutionary biologist Jeremy J. Austin sheds light on the demographic history of the thylacine on the mainland and in Tasmania. Austin and his team sequenced and analyzed 51 mitochondrial DNA genomes (mtDNA) of the thylacine from subfossil remains and historic museum specimens. The investigation found that around 25,000 years ago thylacines on the mainland split into separate eastern and western populations. The western population was larger and genetically more diverse than the eastern or the historic Tasmanian population, suggesting that by the time Europeans arrived in Tasmania around 1800, Tasmanian tigers already had low genetic diversity—a sign of a genetic bottleneck.

Thylacines reached Tasmania from Australia via a land bridge that existed during the last Ice Age. Due to glaciation, the sea level was much lower, connecting Tasmania to the Australian mainland. When sea levels rose again around 12,000 years ago after the Ice Age, the land bridge was flooded and Tasmania became an island. Thylacines in Tasmania remained isolated there, while their populations on the Australian mainland later went extinct. The stretch of sea that separates Australia from Tasmania today is known as Bass Strait.

By the time the first Europeans reached the Australian mainland in the early 17th century, thylacines there were already extinct; their disappearance is dated to around 3,200 years before present. The species disappeared earlier in New Guinea as well. In historic times, Tasmanian tigers were found exclusively on the island of Tasmania, making them a relict species there.

Why did the thylacine disappear from Australia?

The reason why the thylacine disappeared from the Australian mainland is not clearly established. However, most scientists suspect that feral dogs, which likely came to Australia with early human migrants, and the dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) introduced around 5,000 years ago played a key role. Dogs and dingoes may have displaced the thylacine by increasing competitive pressure.

The species were probably too similar to coexist. In his book Der Gesang des Dodo (2001), David Quammen notes that the dingo, well adapted to the Australian mainland, had a decisive advantage due to its placental reproduction. While placental mammals such as the dingo give birth to well-developed young, marsupials give birth to very underdeveloped offspring that must continue their development in the mother’s pouch. This mode of development makes them more vulnerable to environmental influences and predators, which could be a disadvantage in competition with dingoes. The dingo likely had a higher survival and reproduction rate, enabling it to occupy the thylacine’s ecological niches on the mainland, while the thylacine as a marsupial came under increasing pressure.

An important clue supporting this theory is the fact that dingoes never reached Tasmania. When dingoes arrived in Australia, Tasmania was already separated from the mainland by Bass Strait. On Tasmania, where dingoes do not occur, thylacines are known to have survived at least until 1936.

Tasmanian tiger—persecuted unfairly?

Tasmania has been inhabited by humans for more than 20,000 years. The first settlers were Aboriginal Australians who walked to Tasmania when a land bridge connected the Australian mainland to the island. But it was only with the arrival of a group of Britons in 1803 that trouble began for the thylacine, which at that time was Australia’s largest carnivorous marsupial. The group consisted of free settlers, soldiers, convicts—and 32 sheep. Tasmania’s fertile pastures meant that the new inhabitants soon began sheep farming, with profound effects on the island’s landscape, economy, and political culture.

According to David Quammen, up to 1820 there were only four reports of encounters with the shy, nocturnal thylacine. But then the situation changed: the Tasmanian tiger began killing sheep. In 1824 a settler complained about “an animal like a panther that causes dreadful devastation among the flocks”. Although the thylacine continued to avoid settled and cleared areas, it apparently did occasionally take sheep in remote grazing regions.

The thylacine’s ability to open its lower jaw extremely wide—reportedly at an angle of up to 80 or even 90 degrees—contributed to it being demonized as a dangerous sheep killer. In 2011, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney studied the biomechanical performance of the thylacine skull and found that its jaw was too weak to hold struggling prey or to eat large animals. The scientists therefore assume that the species mainly hunted smaller prey such as wombats, wallabies, or possums.

The researchers also compared the thylacine’s skull with those of two other marsupial predators that lived at the time of European settlement: the bone-eating Tasmanian devil and the tiger quoll (Dasyurus maculatus). They found that compared to these predators, the thylacine was less well adapted to hunting large prey. The spotted-tailed quoll proved particularly well suited to taking larger prey, as its rigid skull and high bite force enabled it to kill animals of very different sizes efficiently.

Public hatred of the Tasmanian tiger was further fueled by spreading an image that shaped perceptions of the animal in a negative way. It was a photo by Henry Burrell showing a thylacine carrying a dead chicken in its mouth. First published in 1921 in The Australian Museum Magazine and reproduced uncritically for many years, the picture actually shows a thylacine in a cage, which was concealed by cropping the photo.

A former Burrell employee claimed that the animal depicted in the photo was not a live thylacine but a taxidermied specimen placed in front of a bush backdrop. This claim led historian Carol Freeman to analyze the photo’s glass plate negative in 2005. Her investigation found that the thylacine in the photo was indeed a mounted specimen. In his book The Last Tasmanian Tiger (2000), Robert Paddle considers this photo one of the main reasons for the widespread but mistaken belief that the thylacine had been a major poultry thief.

Bounty hunting for the “hyena”

Over time, farmers developed an almost hysterical hatred of the “hyena” that threatened their sheep. Little attention was paid to the fact that stray wild dogs brought to the island on British ships, or other marsupial predators, were also responsible for attacks on sheep flocks. However, blame for the losses was mainly placed on thylacines, which led to bounty hunting for the “hyena” beginning in 1830.

The first bounty program was initiated by the Van Diemen’s Land Company, a sheep and cattle breeding company founded in 1825 that had acquired vast tracts of land in parts of Tasmania. The program offered:

“5 shillings for each male hyena, 7 shillings for each female hyena (with or without young) and half of the above bounties for male and female devils and wild dogs.”

Der Gesang des Dodo. 2001. p. 375. D. Quammen

The amounts were considerable for laborers at the time and roughly corresponded to a day’s wage. It became particularly dangerous for the thylacine population when an additional rule was introduced providing for an increase in the bounties:

“When 20 hyenas have been destroyed, the reward for the next 20 will be raised to 6 shillings and 8 shillings respectively, and thereafter an additional shilling per head will be added after every 7 animals killed, until the reward amounts to 10 shillings for each male and 12 shillings for each female animal.”

Der Gesang des Dodo. 2001. p. 375. D. Quammen

Such a rising bounty compensated hunters for the fact that as thylacines became fewer, it became increasingly difficult to kill one. A progressive bounty was ideal for keeping pressure on a dwindling species until it was completely exterminated.

In addition to public bounties, the Van Diemen’s Land Company created the position of a “tiger man” on one of its properties at the northwest tip of Tasmania. His job was to kill predators, especially thylacines. In return he received lodging, food, and a reward for each animal killed.

There are no records of how many Tasmanian tigers were killed by the general public or the tiger man in the 1830s or 1840s, but it is assumed that there were hundreds. As early as the mid-19th century, scientifically minded observers began reporting the species’ decline, and some suspected that the thylacine would soon be extinct. The British naturalist John Gould warned in 1863, for example:

“If the comparatively small island of Tasmania becomes more densely populated, the numbers of this unique animal will rapidly diminish, and it will then be spoken of as an animal of the past.”

Riesenkraken und Tigerwölfe. p. 179. L. Frenz

Even as thylacine numbers continued to fall, landowners claimed before the House of Assembly in Hobart that “hyenas” were killing between 30,000 and 50,000 sheep per year. Members even paid bounties out of their own pockets, and when they asked the government for support, the state bounty program was introduced in 1888. It ran until 1912, when it was discontinued due to a lack of thylacines.

Extinction causes: a combination of several factors

As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the thylacine was considered rare, but the total population in Tasmania was likely never very large—not even before the arrival of the British in the early 19th century. The few Tasmanian tigers kept in different zoos, with a single exception, did not reproduce.

In addition to the theory that targeted hunting of the supposed “sheep killer” contributed to the thylacine’s extinction, there are further considerations based on the number of bounties paid. Despite intensive hunting, the number of thylacines killed remained constant and even increased toward the end of the 19th century. In 1900, for example, 153 bounties were paid, and 1905 was the last year in which rewards were granted for more than 100 thylacines killed.

From 1908 onward, the number of bounties paid declined sharply, to just 17. A year later, only two bounties were paid, and from 1910 onward no further bounty was granted. This suggests that the thylacine population must have collapsed between 1905 and 1909. This rapid decline cannot be explained by hunting alone; rather, a combination of several lethal factors must have severely affected the species.

One factor would be the loss of natural habitat: by the middle of the 19th century, much of the island had been leased or sold to settlers and the Van Diemen’s Land Company. Forests were cleared and pastures created for sheep and cattle. The thylacine may have been unable to adapt sufficiently to these new conditions.

Competition with feral dogs brought by European settlers may also have harmed the thylacine significantly. These dogs not only hunted sheep but also the thylacine’s natural prey such as wallabies or pademelons (a genus of small kangaroos), thereby reducing its food base.

Did an epidemic drive the thylacine to extinction?

In addition to hunting, habitat loss, and food competition, another factor may have contributed to the disappearance of the Tasmanian tiger: disease. Between 1896 and 1910, several small predator species in Tasmania fell ill with a distemper-like disease. It is known that the spotted-tailed quoll and the eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) were particularly affected, but the disease may also have infected the thylacine.

In 2012, Robert Paddle investigated the role of this epidemic disease in relation to the thylacine’s extinction. His research suggests that the epidemic may have made a significant contribution to the species’ disappearance. While hunting, habitat destruction, and other stress factors caused by Europeans could also have driven the species to extinction on their own, Paddle argues that the process would have been slower without the disease. The epidemic greatly accelerated the population’s decline and caused the species to go extinct faster than it would have through other factors alone.

The Australian ecologist Thomas A. A. Prowse and his team reach a different conclusion. In a study published in 2013 at the University of Adelaide, the researchers conclude that the distemper-like disease alone cannot be held responsible for the thylacine’s extinction. Rather, the rapid population decline and final extinction are attributed to a combination of different factors, mainly linked to the activities of European settlers.

The study argues that these combined stressors—especially intensive hunting—were sufficient to explain the thylacine’s extinction, without needing an additional epidemic as a cause. Intensive hunting led to a major population decline, while competition with introduced species, such as sheep and other herbivores, further constrained the thylacine’s food base. Habitat loss and additional stressors such as predation by feral or domestic dogs also played a significant role in the species’ extinction.

Inbreeding as a cause of extinction

The Tasmanian tiger was probably already rare when the first European settlers arrived in Tasmania in 1803. Estimates suggest there were likely no more than 1,500 to 2,000 animals. A 2012 study examined the thylacines’ genetic diversity before their extinction by analyzing the mtDNA of 14 museum specimens collected more than a hundred years ago. The results show that the thylacine population in Tasmania had severely reduced genetic diversity due to inbreeding, which may have contributed to the species’ extinction. This genetic impoverishment is attributed to complete geographic isolation that began more than 10,000 years ago, when Tasmania separated from the Australian mainland.

Further research in 2017 on the genome of a preserved thylacine pouch young found that the decline in genetic diversity began long before humans arrived in Australia, possibly 70,000 to 120,000 years ago. This means the population gradually declined over a long period and showed fewer genetic differences.

Early gene losses as a contributing cause

A 2025 study suggests that the thylacine likely carried a genetic weakness long before humans and dingoes arrived in Australia. Between 13 and 1 million years ago four important genes were lost on its lineage (SAMD9L, HSD17B13, CUZD1, VWA7). These genes help, among other things, in viral defense, tumor suppression, metabolism, and milk production.

At the same time, there are indications of a reduction in the sense of smell (fewer olfactory receptor genes, smaller olfactory bulbs)—apparently hunting shifted more toward vision. The gene losses fall into a phase of strong climate change (MMCT), during which the thylacine specialized into a larger, highly carnivorous predator. If certain abilities are used less over long periods, they can be reduced evolutionarily—which can leave gaps in a species’ “safety net”.

For the thylacine, that means it was probably less resilient to disease and environmental stress and at the same time more tightly bound to a specific way of life. When additional pressure then came in historic times —competition with the dingo on the mainland, as well as persecution and likely disease in Tasmania—the buffer was missing.

What is new in the study is the indication of a long-evolved genetic weakness. When this met the pressure of modern times—dingo, persecution, habitat change—both acted together. This combination plausibly explains why the species ultimately disappeared despite remnant populations in Tasmania.

The thylacine is not the only endemic animal species that has gone extinct in Tasmania. Other examples include the Tasmanian emu (1873), the Cascade funnel-web spider (after 1926), and the Lake Pedder earthworm (after 1972).

When did the thylacine go extinct in Tasmania?

At the beginning of the 20th century, the increasing rarity of thylacines led to rising demand for live specimens for zoos worldwide, further increasing pressure on an already small population. Despite exporting breeding pairs, almost all attempts to breed thylacines in captivity failed—the last thylacine living outside Australia died in 1931 at the London Zoo. Only a single litter is documented under controlled conditions, born in 1899 at the Melbourne Zoo.

By the end of the 1920s, the Tasmanian tiger had become extremely rare in the wild. Although many held it responsible for attacks on sheep, the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna recommended establishing a protected area in 1928 to preserve the last thylacines. Among other locations, the Arthur-Pieman Conservation Area in western Tasmania was proposed as a potential site.

However, the protective measures actually taken came too late. Only in July 1936, just two months before the death of the last known thylacine, was the species placed under legal protection. This last thylacine, which died at the Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936, was long referred to as the “last of its kind” named “Benjamin”, but more recent research shows this was a mistake.

In December 2022, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) reported that the true last thylacine was an old female, captured in May 1936 by the trapper Elias Churchill in the Florentine Valley and sold to the Hobart Zoo. Because snaring was already illegal at the time, the purchase of the animal was not officially registered. The remains of this last thylacine were long missing, until Robert Paddle and Kathryn Medlock rediscovered them in an old cupboard in the Hobart Museum.

According to Robert Paddle, there was never a thylacine in the Hobart Zoo named “Benjamin” ; this myth was put into the world by a certain Frank Darby. His story, in which he called the last thylacine “Benjamin”, was published in the Melbourne press in 1968. When Darby’s story became known in Tasmania in the 1980s, local reporters tracked down Alison Reid, whose father ran the zoo until his death in 1935 and who had worked there herself. She confirmed that no one named Frank Darby had ever been an animal keeper at the Hobart Zoo. Despite this debunking, the “Benjamin” myth persists to this day. The last thylacine was a female and definitely did not bear the name “Benjamin”.

A detailed study of the zoo archives in 2023 found that the body of the thylacine that was photographed and filmed so often was destroyed at the zoo after its death in May 1936. The pelt and skeleton of the true last thylacine are now in the TMAG in Hobart.

In May 2020, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) rediscovered historic footage from 1935 that supposedly shows the thylacine “Benjamin”, as the film archive announced in a statement. This sequence had not been accessible to the public for around 85 years. The footage comes from the travelogue Tasmania the Wonderland, of which only nine minutes have survived. The NFSA suspects that early Australian filmmaker Sidney Cook was responsible for this footage:

The last thylacine in the wild probably died in 1930, when farmer Wilfred Batty shot it on his property in Mawbanna in northwestern Tasmania. The animal, likely a male, had been seen near Batty’s house for several weeks. Batty posed the dead thylacine against a fence for a photograph, giving the impression that the animal was still alive:

Incidentally, in 1966 the Tasmanian government established a 647,000-hectare protected area in the island’s southwest in case some thylacines might still persist in refuges. Dogs, cats, and weapons were prohibited in this area. However, since no conclusive proof of the Tasmanian tiger’s existence in the wild could be produced for more than 50 years, it was officially declared extinct by the IUCN in 1982 and by the Tasmanian government in 1986.

Search expeditions for the thylacine

In early 1937, less than a year after the death of the last known Tasmanian tiger at the Hobart Zoo, the government agency Fauna Board sent a small expedition to search for thylacines that might have survived in the wild. In the Arthur River region in northwestern Tasmania, researchers found some indications of the species, including tracks and reports of recent sightings. Nevertheless, a proposal to place this area under protection was ignored. A second expedition in 1937/1938 searched the island’s southwest, again found tracks, and renewed the proposal to establish a protected area—again without success.

Only after World War II, in November 1945, did the next search expedition take place. Australian biologist David Fleay searched for months for the carnivorous marsupial but found only a few dubious footprints. From 1963, zoologist and thylacine expert Eric Guiler, supported by the Fauna Board, conducted an intensive search along Tasmania’s southwest coast. Guiler set more than 1,500 foot traps in Tasmania’s forests that did not injure captured animals. He caught only Tasmanian devils, wombats, and small kangaroos.

A WWF-funded search in the early 1980s also produced no results. Guiler nevertheless believed that the thylacine had found a last refuge somewhere in Tasmania. Although he conducted search operations in various regions of the island for more than 40 years, he was never granted an encounter with a thylacine.

One of the most intensive searches took place between 1967 and 1973. Zoologist Jeremy Griffith and dairy farmer James Malley carried out extensive investigations along Tasmania’s west coast. They installed automatic camera stations, immediately followed up on reported sightings, and founded the Thylacine-Expeditionary-Research-Team in 1972. Despite all these efforts, they too were unable to provide evidence that the thylacine had survived.

In 1982, a particularly credible thylacine sighting was reported, leading to another search operation. The observer was a ranger responsible for monitoring the national parks. He did not seek public attention and did not tell the media his story. Even his name is unknown. This is how he described his encounter with the thylacine:

“I had parked at a crossroads in a remote wooded area in the northwest of the state and had lain down in the back of my vehicle to sleep. (…) At two in the morning I woke up and habitually swept the area with the spotlight. As I moved the beam in a circle, it picked up a large thylacine standing six to seven meters away, side-on to me. My camera bag was not within immediate reach, so I decided to observe the animal carefully before risking any movement. It was a fully grown male in excellent condition, with twelve black stripes on sandy-colored fur. The eyes shimmered a pale yellow. It moved only once, opened its mouth and bared its teeth. (…) It disappeared into the undergrowth. When I got out of the car and went to the spot where it had vanished, I noticed a strong smell. Despite an intensive search, I could not find any further trace of the animal.”

Der Gesang des Dodo. 2001. p. 393. D. Quammen

On the basis of this report by one of its own employees, the park authority assigned an officer to investigate the incident. For two years, the officer returned to the area every 14 days in the hope of repeating the encounter with a thylacine—unfortunately without success.

Is the Tasmanian tiger still alive?—Sightings are not uncommon

The thylacine is probably the most frequently sighted animal that is already considered extinct. Although much pointed to the species being extinct, animals were repeatedly reported. A 1982 article titled Recent Alleged Sightings of the Thylacine reports that 104 alleged sightings were reported between 1970 and 1979. For the period from 1960 to 1969, 84 such reports are documented. Between 1930 and 1980, 247 sightings were recorded, with a significant increase in alleged sightings observed particularly from 1960 onward. The authors also note that the frequency of reports appears to correlate strongly with media coverage of the search for the thylacine.

A particularly credible sighting is described by Lothar Frenz in his book Riesenkraken und Tigerwölfe (2000). In 1995, wildlife ranger Charles Beaseley reported that at dusk on Tasmania’s east coast he had seen “an animal with dirty brown fur and black stripes, about half the size of a German shepherd, with a face similar to that of a Staffordshire bull terrier, only longer”. The animal came out of the bush, turned around on its own axis, and disappeared again. Beaseley described the tail as kangaroo-like with a slight curve. However, he could not provide evidence because the ground was too hard for footprints due to lack of rain.

In 2019, the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment published a report listing eight unconfirmed sighting reports from Tasmania from 2016 to 2019. A couple from Western Australia visiting Tasmania reported on 25 February 2018:

“An animal slowly stepped onto the road. [Name] was driving and stopped the vehicle. The animal walked from the right side of the road (…) about three-quarters of the way across the gravel road, turned around a few times and looked at the vehicle, and then walked back into the same area it had come from. It was clearly visible for 12 to 15 seconds. The animal had a stiff and strong tail that was thick at the base. It had stripes on its back. It was about the size of a large kelpie (larger than a fox but smaller than a German shepherd). The animal was calm and showed no signs of fear. [Name] and [Name] are 100 percent sure that the animal they saw was a thylacine. It appeared to be in good condition.”

Thylacine Sighting Reports – 1 September 2016 to 19 September 2019. Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment. URL: https://nre.tas.gov.au/Documents/RTI%20025%20-%202019-20.pdf

To this day, there is no definitive proof that the Tasmanian tiger still exists. Numerous search expeditions were unsuccessful, and even the reward of US$100,000 offered in 1983 by American billionaire Ted Turner for proof of the thylacine’s continued existence yielded no success. In March 2005, the Australian news magazine The Bulletin offered a reward of $1.25 million for capturing a living Tasmanian tiger. When the offer expired at the end of June 2005, no one had presented evidence of the species’ existence. Afterwards, Tasmanian tour operator Stewart Malcolm offered a reward of $1.75 million for an unharmed live animal—so far without success.

Thylacine sightings in Australia

Thylacine sightings are reported not only in Tasmania but also repeatedly on the Australian mainland, even though the species has been considered extinct there for at least 2,000 years. The Department of Conservation and Land Management recorded a total of 203 sighting reports in Western Australia between 1936 and 1998. Particularly frequent sightings from the mainland are reported from southern Victoria.

In March 2017, two independent eyewitness reports on the remote Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland caused a stir. An article in The Guardian reported that one of the witnesses was a long-time employee of the Queensland National Parks Service and the other an experienced camper in the north of the state. Australian research professor Bill Laurance spoke at length with the two witnesses, who claimed to have seen possible thylacines. Both provided plausible and detailed descriptions. All sightings so far took place at night, and the descriptions did not match animals known in Queensland such as dingoes, wild dogs, or feral pigs.

Numerous photos and videos of alleged Tasmanian tigers circulate on the internet, both from Australia and from Tasmania. One of these videos comes from Paul Day, a teacher from South Australia, and allegedly shows a running thylacine at sunrise in June 2017:

The animal was filmed on a farm near Moonta on the Yorke Peninsula. While some see the video as evidence for the existence of the marsupial tiger, there are also skeptical voices: zoologist Kristofer Helgen of the University of Adelaide told the Australian news site news.com.au that, in his opinion, it could be “a fox, probably limping or injured”.

Calculating a new extinction date based on sightings

In their 2023 study Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct, Australian environmental scientist Barry W. Brook and his team analyzed 1,237 documented thylacine sightings between 1910 and 2019. These included 429 confirmed sightings by experts, 226 unconfirmed sightings, and 99 cases based on physical traces of the species.

The study suggests that a remnant thylacine population may have survived for many years after the death of the last captive animal in 1936 in remote regions of Tasmania. The results indicate that the actual extinction date of the species may be much later than previously assumed. While extinction before 1940 is considered undisputed on the basis of physical specimens, the unconfirmed sighting reports suggest that the final extinction of the species may not have occurred until the 1980s or even later.

According to the research, the time window for the thylacine’s extinction extends from the 1980s to the present. Sighting numbers show that reports of thylacines were relatively constant between 1940 and 1999, but became significantly rarer and less convincing from 2000 onward. The scientists consider it entirely possible that the thylacine still existed until the end of the 1990s. However, Brook estimates the probability that individual thylacines still roam Tasmania today as extremely low. Given the increasing use of trail cameras, the species would long since have been recorded if it still existed.

Tasmanian tigers in New Guinea?

In general, scientists assume that the thylacine disappeared from New Guinea before it went extinct on the Australian mainland, but precise dates are not available. Although New Guinea separated from the Australian mainland around 8,000 years ago, fossil bone finds first made in 1960 confirm that Tasmanian tigers also existed there. In addition to unconfirmed sightings of the Tasmanian tiger in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland after 1936, there are also more recent reports of “striped dogs” in New Guinea. Such reports come especially from West New Guinea or West Papua, the western part of New Guinea under Indonesian administration.

As early as 2013, Karl Shuker recommended, a British zoologist and cryptozoologist, that “tiger hunters” should shift their search from Tasmania to New Guinea. He believes that a thylacine population could still exist on the mountainous island, which is among the least explored habitats in the world.

Shuker refers to reports of sightings of animals in Papua New Guinea and the western part of New Guinea that resemble the Tasmanian tiger. These reports come from local tribes who call the animal “dobsegna”. It is characterized by a large mouth, a straight, long, stiff tail, and striking stripes on the coat—all characteristic features of the thylacine. Confusion with the rare New Guinea dingo, which has no stripes and a flexible tail, is therefore unlikely.

Because West New Guinea (Irian Jaya) is among the least explored regions in the world, the likelihood increases that the Tasmanian tiger or a similar, as yet undiscovered species could have survived in these hard-to-access, densely forested areas. The unique ecological conditions of New Guinea might have allowed a predatory marsupial like the thylacine to survive in niches where there is hardly any competition from other large predators.

So far, there is no concrete evidence for the survival of the Tasmanian tiger in New Guinea. Nevertheless, recurring sightings and sustained interest continue to fuel hope for its possible existence. The two-part documentary Hunt for Truth: Tasmanian Tiger (2024) by filmmaker Tim Noonan also takes up the topic. He follows promising leads on the thylacine not only in Tasmania, but also in Papua New Guinea.

Queensland tiger and Tasmanian tiger

The Queensland tiger, also known as “yarri,” is a cryptid—an as-yet undiscovered animal species—allegedly sighted in eastern Australia, especially in the state of Queensland. It is described as a tree-dwelling, aggressive, cat-like marsupial with a striped coat that reaches the size of a medium-sized dog.

The first detailed report of an unknown cat-like animal in Queensland was published in 1871 in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society. Bernard Heuvelmans, a Belgian-French zoologist, regarded the Queensland tiger in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958) as the most likely officially recognized unknown animal. At that time, this mysterious creature was sometimes even mentioned in Australian natural history books.

There are various theories about what the Queensland tiger might actually be. One of the best-known claims is that it could be a surviving relative of the marsupial lion Thylacoleo carnifex, a carnivorous marsupial that lived in Australia during the Pleistocene. Another possibility is that the Queensland tiger is an undiscovered native marsupial that has so far escaped scientific description.

Some cryptozoologists, including Rex Gilroy, have speculated that the Queensland tiger could be a surviving relative of the thylacine. This hypothesis is based on reports of striped animals with a body shape reminiscent of the thylacine. Such sightings could point to an unknown population of thylacines that survived on the Australian mainland, or to a related species that evolved in parallel.

However, the connection between the Queensland tiger and the thylacine remains speculative, as there is no scientific evidence for the existence of the Queensland tiger. The appearance and behaviors described for both animals also hardly match. While the Queensland tiger is described more as a cat-like creature, the thylacine is more associated with dogs or wolves. Even the striped coat of the Queensland tiger is said to be different: the stripes are supposed to run around the belly and sides of the animal and end before the spine, whereas the thylacine’s stripes are restricted to the back and sides. British zoologist Karl Shuker notes in his book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995) that identifying the Queensland tiger with the thylacine is more an “act of desperation than of care”.

Can the thylacine be cloned?

Since 2000, scientists from various universities in New South Wales, Melbourne, and Texas have been trying to clone the marsupial tiger. They use a wide range of starting materials, including feces, museum exhibits, as well as fetuses and tissue samples preserved in alcohol.

In 2017, researchers at the University of Melbourne succeeded in fully deciphering the thylacine’s genome. The basis was a pouch young that at the time of its death was still in its mother’s pouch and had been preserved in alcohol in 1909 at the Victoria Museum in Australia. The decoded genome helped scientists investigate important aspects of the thylacine’s evolution and natural history. This included the genetic basis of its convergent evolution with dogs, its evolutionary relationships with other marsupials, and changes in its population size over time. This also clarified the lineage of the Tasmanian tiger: it belongs to the order Dasyuromorphia, which also includes quolls, Tasmanian devils, and the numbat. The thylacine is the only species of the thylacine family (Thylacinidae) that survived into modern times.

In August 2022, it was announced that the University of Melbourne would enter into a partnership with the Texas biotech start-up Colossal Biosciences to bring back the thylacine using its closest living relative, the fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata). The plan is to genetically modify dunnart cells so that they become artificial thylacine cells, from which embryos could ultimately grow that would need to be carried by a larger marsupial.

To bring an extinct animal back to life, however, one needs not only DNA as the carrier of the genetic code, but also RNA, which transports and translates the information stored in DNA. In a study published in 2023, scientists succeeded for the first time in extracting RNA molecules from the tissue of a long-extinct organism. Paleogeneticist Emilio Mármol-Sánchez and his team at the University of Stockholm extracted, sequenced, and analyzed historic RNA from muscle and skin tissue of a thylacine that has been kept at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm since 1891.

In October 2024, it became known that researchers discovered a thylacine head in a museum in Melbourne that contained surprisingly well-preserved RNA. This RNA enables deeper insights into the thylacine’s gene activity, which is considered an important step toward reconstructing its genome. According to Colossal Biosciences, the genome is 99.9 percent sequenced, but 45 gaps remain. The company plans to close these using state-of-the-art DNA technologies in order to genetically revive the thylacine.

Even though it has not yet been possible to clone the thylacine, these advances in biotechnology open up new possibilities. Nevertheless, reviving an extinct species remains an enormous challenge that raises not only scientific but also ethical questions.